Well, currently a lot of climate scientists have recently been discredited, some are under investigation and face jail sentences, and others are backpedalling like it was an Olympic sport.

A lot of the methods used by those climate scientists have been shown to have been myopic, or biased in the extreme.

Not that the anti AGW are any better, however it leads us to the current stalemate, and AFAIK none of them are facing 10 years in jail.

I am glad backpedalling isn't an an Olympic sport. It would be rubbish!

It would ruin the Tour de France too!

Sure, so long as you adopt the same degree of objectivity when the highly biased CRU investigation team produces its findings

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/mone...rtnership.html

LA Times?????????

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...te-change-laws

Guardian?????

(even more depressing......)

Wall Street journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...atestheadlines

ConocoPhillips' announcement to leave to the partnership comes as climate legislation in Washington has stalled and there are mounting concerns about the burden proposals in the House and Senate will have on domestic refiners and U.S. consumers.

1. A carbon tax is not the same as an ETS (I'm NOT proposing an ETS).
2. If we give the money raised by a carbon tax back to mums and dads IT WILL STILL REDUCE non-renewable energy consumption (you need to read up on basic economic theory).
3. Are you implying that all foreign aid is an evil "dirty little plot"? Was the Marshall Plan really a commie takeover ploy?

1. A carbon tax is not the same as an ETS (I'm NOT proposing an ETS).

Can you tell me the difference between your Carbon Tax, and the proposed ETS?

I would suggest to you that either will attempt to force consumers to reduce consumption via punitive taxation. It is pedantic to argue over the name, when the intention is the same – namely, to increase the cost of carbon emitting fuels to a point where consumption is reduced.

But hey – if you have a different solution then please present it.


2. If we give the money raised by a carbon tax back to mums and dads IT WILL STILL REDUCE non-renewable energy consumption (you need to read up on basic economic theory).

Damn, I knew the postgrad in Economics was a waste of time.

So – using your logic, if we taxed cigarettes at $50 each and handed the S50 back to the smokers, cigarette consumption would decline?

I tell you Budawang, I may not have learned much in those lectures, but I managed to align my meagre brain cells into a common direction and at least get some basic logic flowing.


3. Are you implying that all foreign aid is an evil "dirty little plot"? Was the Marshall Plan really a commie takeover ploy?

• The Marshall Plan wasn’t funded by a “fake” tax, imposed to alleviate a hypothetical but unproved problem.
• The USA did very nicely out of the Marshall Plan. Go to many European factories and you still see those US made lathes, presses, drills and other machine tools. It helped kick started post war USA manufacturing.
• The Marshall plan was designed so that Germany repaid the money to the USA. In fact the last German repayment was made in June 1971.
• The Marshall Plan “bought” Europe for the USA, and at a cheap price. Most countries aided by the plan had US bases and economic “advisors”. Some countries were even forced to join the Korean war in order to keep the aid running.

Do you note any differences between the Marshall Aid plan and us giving USD100 billion to the third world, most of which will end in corrupt pockets?

Yeap, with commies under the bed, terrorists in the roof, greenies in the backyard and socialists in the garage - hows a person supposed to do what they want any more?

they've stopped us smoking, made us leave some land free from economic growth, put catalytic converters on our cars, removed DDT from our food, and all their other strange shit. They haven't even proofed the above is even harmful, not to a definitive causal point. Some of the studies were flawed, but no, we had to go with it. It's interrupting our liberties!

I'm dying to know what you find out. It is a bit surprising to me, given the range of your questions, that you haven't read the IPCC report in full, contacted all the scientists and researchers and seen what they have to say.

The propaganda mill around this debate is scoring quite a victory over the latest 'mistake'. One in 3000 pages. If that was indicative of a larger pattern the people who stand to gain from the IPCC falling apart would have by now ripped the whole body of study to pieces. They haven't because there isn't anything substantial there. So they shout very loud about the one mistake that is there. How many 'mistakes' were made in your field on the way to knowledge you have today?

It's sad to see the same illogical arguments being used over and over - a lot of them have their genesis at www.junkscience.com. A site that has been constantly and soundly rebutted, but because his affiliation with Exxon and NewsCorp is given a lot of air time. Most of his stuff has been refuted, countless times, however, one of the key ploys in this propaganda is to denounce the person presenting the evidence and ignore the actual evidence.

The issue with the CRU was waiting to happen. Not because he did something wrong, but because everyone gets it wrong sooner or later. If they dug around enough they would find enough evidence to get someone sooner or later. So they might get one climate researcher into jail. It's taken them years to get one (around 20 years). They have thrown large amounts of money at this; Exxon funds over 100 denial groups alone, gives $20 million a year to politicians in the US alone (93% to republicans in the US), amongst other funding. Why would they need to do that if the science was on their side? And how come they have managed to succeed so little in the scientific debate, yet manage to achieve so much in the public sphere?

This CRU thing is a PR victory. It is does not change the science.

http://exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php

A lot of climate scientists are facing jail? Or a small number?

Non-governmental scientists are not bound by the same laws as governmental scientists which give them much more scope. And a lot of the anti AGW guys operate under 'opinion' rather scientific fact. And there are very few laws against personal opinion (holocaust denying been one - not sure how many more there are).

I said “some” – which does not imply any number. Some falling slices of toast land jam side up, others land the other way (hey – you are doing a PhD in propaganda not me )

From what I have seen the government scientists have been running on “opinion” rather than scientific fact just as much as the anti AGW.

I haven’t seen any scientific facts at all. If anyone has them please state them…

You need to go back to the questions you have appropriated (for they do not originate with you – sure you might think they are worth asking, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you have investigated the original asker). If you are going to appropriate them, perhaps you need to investigate the questions before you seek the answers. For example:

Who asked the question?
What are their motivations?
What do they stand to gain?
What do they stand to lose?
What assumptions are built into the questions?
Are they being framed in any particular manner? Does this framing affect the way answers will be handled?

These questions, after all, are political questions dressed up as scientific debate.

And as for the second part - plenty of links to scientific facts that counter this questions has been presented in this debate. Perhaps you didn't notice them?

The search for truth overrules all other factors and influences.

It doesn’t matter who asks the questions, or the motivation for asking.

Gains and losses are side issues.

There is a simple issue here. Can we PROVE that the earth is warming due to human influence.

One of the leading AGW proponents, who is now under investigation and faces a potential jail sentence in relation to his activities, said only days ago on the BBC:

- Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.


B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.


C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

I read that as:

• The world has been cooling between 2002-209
• There has been statistically significant warming between 1995-2009
• There have been 3 periods of statistically similar activity since 1860

Can you explain his comments?

no i can't - not in this instance where you have cherry-picked information out of a report. But this is a side issue which is being paraded as a core issue, so I will not give it the amount of credence that vested interests would like to see me give it.